Jay Slater’s devastated father has hit out at people speculating about his son online, as the search for the missing teenager continues in Tenerife.
The apprentice bricklayer, 19, has been missing since June 17 and local authorities are calling on volunteers to assist them in their search.
Speaking to reporters, Warren Slater said: “We just still can’t believe it. It’s been so tough on us, and I want people to think about us as parents and what we are going through.
“All those trollers having a go at us, they don’t know how we feel, why don’t they come up here and have a look and see for themselves how dangerous it is.”
On Friday, the Guardia Civil appealed for volunteer associations, such as firefighters, and individual volunteers who were experts in rugged terrain to assist in a “busqueda masiva”, or massive search, on Saturday.
The search in the village of Masca, near to his last-known location, is being co-ordinated to take in a steep rocky area, including ravines, trails and paths.
It marks the 13th day in the search for the apprentice bricklayer.
Brigadier Cipriano Martin, chief of the Guardia Civil’s mountain rescue team, said Mr Slater would not have travelled to “any area we don’t go to”.
Speaking through a translator, he told the BBC: “There are difficult areas and we’ve given instructions for people not to risk their own safety.
“But there’s something we need to make clear, which is any area we don’t go to, well, Jay won’t have gone there either.
“You have to think about it logically – if I see there’s vegetation in front of me and I’m going to get spiked, and I can’t get through, then he won’t have gone through that area either.
“We have to be logical, obviously.”
Asked if the sea can be reached directly from the search area, he said: “You can reach the sea, in fact last Saturday I went along the whole path – there are old paths which are only occasionally used because it’s a cliff with very little attraction for sporting purposes.
“But you can reach the beach along them, so I reached the beach.
“We didn’t find anything. It’s a path that goes above and not along the bottom of the cliff, it has drops, and what’s needed are ropes to get down and we also know he was not equipped for that.
“There are rocky drops that you cannot get beyond, you can only get down with a harness and ropes – the people searching that spot today will have to turn around I think, because they don’t have the necessary equipment, and anyway the best that Jay could do was simply to walk.”
Mr Slater attended the NRG music festival on the island with two friends before his disappearance and his last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which was about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.
He had reportedly been driven to an Airbnb property in Masca.
According to reports, media were told in a press conference on Saturday that two men who were reported to have rented the Airbnb are “not relevant” to the case.